Building New Habits

When you complete a comprehensive psychological evaluation, there is a lot of information that you are able to learn about yourself and how you may improve upon the challenges that led you to seek the evaluation. Whether or not you receive a formal diagnosis, your psychologist should provide you with tailored recommendations in the final report. Often, these recommendations suggest new things for you to try, in your already full schedule. So how exactly are you to make that happen? How are you to change your behaviors and develop new habits to meet the goals your psychologist recommended?

One useful tool for behavior change is known as automation, which is the process of making new habits automatic by doing them in tandem with behaviors you already do. For example, if your evaluation results recommend that you engage in mindfulness activities to help relieve your stress, you could start this by doing one minute of mindfulness every day after you finish your morning coffee; then gradually bring this up to two minutes, five minutes, and so forth. Over time, your morning coffee will serve as a cue to engage in mindfulness, and the mindfulness can become as automatic of a behavior as taking that first warm sip. I recently contributed to an article about this, titled, “How ‘Automation’ Can Help You Build New Habits.”  In the article, I spoke about how making small steps toward your goals helps you in ultimately reaching them because you experience so much positive reinforcement along the way.  But it is a journey! It takes accountability, patience, and self-rewards for your progress. As you continue accomplishing these small steps, you begin to feel a mind shift, in which you realize self-belief that keeps you going.

“As you show yourself each small change you've made, you're giving yourself the message that you are capable of accomplishment."

Working alongside a therapist following your psychological evaluation can be very helpful to ensure your success in implementing the recommendations. Contacting the psychologist that completed your evaluation can also be helpful if you have questions on ways in which you may best add these new suggested behaviors/habits to your daily life. If you completed an evaluation at Strengths and Solutions and have any questions about your recommendations, please contact us. We are happy to assist you!

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